orge. All torches were extinguished and absolute silence was enforced.
The scouting party failed to hear a sound except the cries of night
birds and their own heavy breathing. All nature seemed to be resting for
the struggle that was to come.

Six fleet fellows were sent over the hills to skirt the edge of the pass
for its full length, a mile or more. They were to wait at the opposite
end until the enemy revealed its approach and then hurry back with the
alarm. Returning to the waiting army, Hugh and the king began the work
of assigning the men to their places. Two hundred were stationed in the
trenches and behind the breastworks at the mouth of the pass, ready to
intercept those of the enemy who succeeded in escaping the boulders and
spears from the hilltops. These men stacked their spears behind them and
then, at the command of the king, who had been instructed by the Izor,
laid themselves upon the ground to sleep. This was an innovation in
warfare so great that open rebellion was threatened. The novices in
civilized and scientific fighting were fully convinced that the enemy
was nowhere in sight and that they would be called when the proper
moment came.

Then came the manning of the four hundred boulders on the top of the
hills. All along the line of heavy rocks men were stationed with
instructions to roll them into the pass when the signal was given, Both
sides of the pass were lined with these boulders, The king was as near
in ecstasies over the arrangements as one of his nature could possibly
be. He prostrated himself a dozen times before the wonderfully clever
genius who was in command, twice bumping his head against exceedingly
hard rocks that he had been unable to see when he began his precipitous
collapse to reverence.

It was after midnight before the army in ambush was ready for the
conflict. Hugh was amazed to find the men cool and submissive, obeying
every order that he managed in some way to convey to them. With
everything in readiness there was nothing to do but to wait for the
crisis, so he threw himself on the grass at the top of the highest point
on the ridge near the opening to the valley, and tried to sleep.

While he reclined there, thinking of a sweet-faced woman and her
Reserves, fully eighteen hundred warriors were stealthily coming up from
the sea. Six wakeful sentinels were waiting for them.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE LADY TENNYS RESERVES

The night passed. One, two, three o'clock went by